…just to be clear; “frogging” means to rip down one’s knitting and start again, and that’s what I did this morning, over and over – sigh! Actually, I did say “frogging” out of context a few times!! The term comes from the knitter singing gaily “ripit, ripit, ripit” as she/he pulls out hours of work. I think this is quite funny, as against the frogging, which is not.

The theme for today’s MMM’13 is “hat”. Now we, as a family, have a large number of hats, from pith helmets and fez/s (what’s the plural of fez?), to sunhats, but none of them have been made by me (I have made loads of hats, but always finish up throwing them away). So, up I got at the crack of dawn to knit a hat! There is only one sort of hat that I could knit in 30 minutes and that is a beanie. Piece of cake, no? NO!! First of all I got carried away and knitted too much – frogged it, then I forgot to put needles into work – frogged it, and on it went, right to the bitter frogging end. However, I did finish up with a beanie that will be useful for my nocturnal power walks in the winter, and I stashbusted to boot, so it’s not all bad. To me it is crying out for a pom pom, but the fashion police (aka Archie) did not find the suggestion at all amusing and basically forbade it. Hmm, feeling evil and I do enjoy making pom poms!!

The beanie is made from the same yarn as the  Dairing Weekend Tunic, which I was going to link to in an earlier post and found that I had forgotton to put the image in – doh! Here it is…

I might go back and put it where it should be. Anyway, the beanie is made with yarn leftover from this tunic, plus a bit of pink, the origins of which I can’t remember.

The rest of my outfit is the blue and white jumper which I managed to finish on Thursday night. I had to make it a bit longer than the pattern, which meant that I used more yarn. This had the knockon effect of making the scarf/collar a bit skimpy, but I think it’s going to be ok. I decided to wear it today (although I ditched the beanie early on!) as I thought it was going to be cool and wet. Well, Perth weather being what it is, it is neither especially cool, nor is it wet. The upshot is that I am a tad warm. Oh well, at least I have a new me-made and am not boring you witless with the Elle pants and Susan top!

The interesting thing about the top is that the pattern developed whilst knitting should have looked like the arms (random stripes), but instead it came out quite symmetrical – in fact, if I had planned this it couldn’t have worked out better. Also, the front and back are so different. This meant that when it was too short, I had to make it longer from the bottom rather than frogging it and starting again.

I do look a bit as though I’m off to hit the ski slopes.

I always find it thrilling when I go down to the wire with yarn or fabric and this little pile is all I had left after making this top – and in the bin it went, so happy.

OK peeps, laters*

NB: No frogs were harmed in the creation of this blog page

*literary ref here, who knows the origins? This will show who wastes their time reading trashy chick lit…!